Arguably the best show on teevee, The Wire opened Sunday night with its fifth and final season. This series is as close an experience to reading a book as there ever has been on television. In this season--- print media (The Baltimore Sun) is included into the dynamic of the series. I'm so used to power cycling through a whole season in like two days that it'll be difficult to have to watch it week to week, but that's the breaks.

Season 5 is the culmination of brilliant, nuanced storytelling, exceptional acting and the fearlessness of Simon and his writers from the get-go in telling novelistic stories on television without pandering.... As for this grand finale, "The Wire" doesn't disappoint (has it ever?)

Christy has a really nice post on it....

If you haven't watched The Wire, you really should. The scripts are genius, the acting is sublime, and the research on the various characters -- decent cops and broken ones, drug dealers and their long-suffering and/or grasping families, community leaders and sell-outs, flawed politicians and the people who bribe them -- has been so spot on, beyond anything you usually see in the sterilized, shorthanded, cardboard cut-out "cop and law" shows.